It happened with little fanfare and even less celebration. Like celebrities reaching the end of their career or any number of businesses that were unable to stay afloat, there’s no sense that something left, even when it clearly did. Kids, we’ve all survived the death of toolbars.
Right? You remember them right? Back in the day they were the bane of all tech people. Be it their parents or clients or that ditzy friend we all seem to have. The call world always start innocently enough. “I think my computer has a virus” or “My internet’s slow”or any of the phrases that still act as a dogwhistle for people that have spent long enough on this business. And sure enough you’d make it, USB drive packed with the essentials and that cheery attitude one has to put on before getting into the trenches…and then you opened the web browser.
Internet Explorer, Safari or Chrome. Installed by you or someone else. It didn’t matter if you cleared this particular computer six days or six months ago, you’d be greeted by the smallest browser window imaginable in creation. The window is full-screen of course but the screen is absolutely filled with toolbars. All of them with the search bar and links that promise…nothing, really, but it’s a nothing that will be worth it. At least, if the group who developed it was to be believed.
Now, tempting as it may be. It’s not entirely accurate to say that the users are to blame. Not completely, at least. Especially since developers figured shadier and shadier methods to get them to install their toolbar. In the end salvation came from the item that was perpetually getting infected. Browsers became smarter, better, more capable of being customized into whatever their users needed without extraneous nonsense. Cruciually, they became incompatible with toolbars and able to block shady advertisers and bogus sites in such a way that most bosses or grandpas will never even see the possibility to install crapware if their tech-savvy person has configured their computer correctly.
And lo, with a sigh, toolbars started dying and they kept dying. The market shrunk. Installers stopped bundling them in favor of more lucrative, if equally questionable, partnerships. I guess even those are dying these days with the increasing number of things that are just a web front-end and can be accessed through the browser.
Now if there were only a way to similarly vanish scam call centers out of existence.
